


Still With Me?

by MollyMaryMarie



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-20 13:33:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8250886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MollyMaryMarie/pseuds/MollyMaryMarie
Summary: You're kidnapped by HYDRA while working for Stark Industries. In Sokovia. Where you meet a set of unusual twins.





	

I wasn’t even supposed to be in Sokovia. In fact, it had been in my contract not to travel to specific Eastern European countries currently involved in crisis. For the last five years, I had been working for Stark Industries, and I was in charge of damage control – assuring foreign countries that Tony Stark was no longer manufacturing weapons, offering them financial assistance to rebuild their homes, working with local Red Cross organizations to prove that Stark Industries was on the side of the good guys. Tony was an Avenger, now.

 

That was part of my speech. I had never actually met Tony Stark.

 

Either way, I wasn’t supposed to actually _go_ to these countries – at least not deep into the war-torn areas. After all, whether he was an Avenger or not, Tony Stark was still responsible for the decimation of their lives, the destruction of their homes, the murders of their families. Anybody affiliated with Stark Industries could very likely be kidnapped, tortured, killed.

 

In fact, that was how I got my job. But that’s another story, for another time.

 

To be technical, I had been in a neighboring country, negotiating a settlement with Sokovian diplomats, and trying to request their assistance in a delicate situation. Intel was acquired that suggested Hydra may have deep roots in Sokovia, and Stark Industries was working, on behalf of the Avengers, to get their specific location. I thought things had been going well.

Until I wound up bound, blindfolded, gagged, and carted off to the exact facility I had been inquiring about. Evidently, much of Sokovia is under the heavy thumb of Hydra. Including her leaders. To be honest, I really wasn’t surprised. Terrified, sure. But not surprised.

They only removed the blindfold once I was inside Hydra’s facility. It was all wrought-iron and pipes and computer screens. I distinctly saw the exchange of bills as we arrived. Again, not all that surprised. I _was_ surprised to see what I assumed to be corpses, covered in long, white sheets, littering the hallways, and nobody seeming to care that they were there. The horror of my situation began to creep in, and I fervently wished that Thor was the kind of god who heard prayers.

The name von Strucker came up in the background conversations, more than once. He was the one leading this whole operation, evidently. If only I could get word to Tony Stark, or Steve Rogers, or _any_ of the Avengers. I couldn’t tell them where I was specifically – I certainly couldn’t give them geographical coordinates – but I _could_ tell them it had only been a couple hours drive from the meeting hall to where I was being held. For some reason, they hadn’t taken my wristwatch when they kidnapped me – I guess nobody wears one anymore with all the tech that can be used to tell time. With Stark’s tech, the distance in time would give them a pretty narrow search radius for Hydra’s base. If I was only a bit better with technology instead of politics, I could probably use my watch to devise an escape plan. I nearly laughed – yeah, not _me_. I wasn’t that special.

My captors led me down several winding halls. There were a lot of rows of cells, fitted with durable Plexiglas-like material. They were all empty. Until we came to the end.

In the first cell, there was a young girl – probably my age, or maybe younger – with long, brown, matted hair. The vacant look in her eyes made my stomach drop. With her hand, she was twirling a few wooden blocks. But they weren’t in her hand – they hovered above it. A red mist swirled around her hands, encompassing the blocks. Suddenly, she moved her fingers slightly, and the blocks twisted into each other, spiking out from the middle. I flinched.  

At first, I couldn’t tell _what_ was in the adjacent cell. It was like spontaneously generated wind – the white sheets on the single bed in the corner blew around on their own. No, wait. If I squinted, I could see there was some sort of blur moving throughout the room – faster than I could focus on. Suddenly, the blur stopped abruptly against the glass, and I flew back in surprise. A young man looked out at me curiously, but confusion drowned the bright blue color of his eyes. His long, dark hair hung into his sallow face, his cheekbones protruding from his gaunt skin. His eyes struggled to focus on me, and just as they did, he regressed into a blur again.

The burly man behind me pushed me past the last cell in the row. For a moment, I thought maybe they wouldn’t keep me as a rat on display, but as we rounded the corner, I saw the door leading into the cell. As he opened the door and shoved me inside, I could only sigh. Would they use me for tests, like they had those other two? Had Hydra instilled those powers into them? Maybe they already had the powers and Hydra was trying to take their powers from them.

It didn’t matter, really. There was something about them that Hydra was keeping alive, and somehow I didn’t see myself fitting into that category. Whatever they intended to do to me, I likely wouldn’t survive. Just as I sat down on the bed they were gracious enough to give me, I heard a voice whispering. It took me a moment to realize it was coming from the next cell.  

As I knelt next to the adjacent wall, I discovered it was in a language I didn’t speak. I recognized it as the same one the translators were speaking in the meeting with the Sokovian diplomats, so I assumed it was the native tongue of the man in the cell next to mine.

As he spoke, it was almost as if the bricks in the wall vibrated under the sound of his hushed voice – like his speed had infiltrated his very atoms and the air around him buzzed excitedly.

“I’m sorry, I only speak English. And French, but it’s very unlikely you speak French,” I rambled, realizing that he probably didn’t understand any of what I was saying.

“Volunteer or captive?” he asked, in perfect English, even if the tone was accented.

“Captive,” I sighed, leaning with my back against the wall, grateful that I would at least have a companion for my time here. Who knew when I would be reported missing? “You?”

“Volunteer,” he said, his answer surprising me. “Pietro.” He said his name, and I smiled.

“Nice to meet you, Pietro. I’m (Y/N),” I sighed, letting my head fall against the wall.

“You’re not Sokovian,” he commented. “Why are you here?” For a moment, I swallowed hard. Not many people took kindly to the knowledge that I worked for Tony Stark.

“Business gone wrong, I guess you could say,” I replied softly, launching into another question before he could ask his. “What about you? What exactly did you volunteer _for_?”

“To have the power to save my sister,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

“Is she the one in the next cell?” I asked, hopeful that she was here with him, at least.

“Yes.” I could practically hear the smile in his voice. “Though, Wanda might be the one saving me.” He actually laughed, and I couldn’t help but smile in response.

“Hydra gave you this power? The way you move fast?” I asked, not extremely sure how to refer to it. Super speed? Light speed?

“Yes, they did. If I could take down this wall, I could show you all the ways I can … move,” he said, his accented voice dropping deep at the end, and I nearly blushed.

“ _Brother_ ,” I heard a distant, warning voice from Wanda’s cell. He laughed, loudly.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” I said, changing the subject so I wouldn’t start focusing on the memory of the color of his eyes, or the way his dark hair hung down in front of them. “Why would you volunteer for this? I saw the failed attempts in the hallways. Why would you risk it?”

For a long time, there was silence. I couldn’t even hear the distinct buzzing noise that had been present since he first spoke to me. The bricks creaked as they eased back into quiescence.

“To give the proper payment to the man responsible for the murder of our parents.” As his voice returned, so did the vibrating of its sound, the bricks nearly rattling in their places in the wall, the windows creating a shattering sound as they shook in their frames.

I dreaded my next question. “Do you know who it is?” I asked quietly. He didn’t answer right away. Instead, a series of beakers along the opposite wall fragmented in sequence, splintering shards of glass along the floor. Guards rushed toward the sound, shouting into communicators in an indistinct language. Pietro was still, unmoved, as he answered.

“Tony Stark.”

 --------------------------------------

“Try it a little further, now. Try it on me,” Wanda called from her cell. With a deep breath, I closed my eyes, trying to focus on the image of Wanda’s face.

But, I barely remembered it. It had been almost a month since I’d seen her, and I had only seen her as a fleeting glance. Still, I tried to focus on the little details I _could_ remember – long, dark hair; light-colored eyes that glowed red in the presence of her manipulation; silver piercings all the way down her ear. It wasn’t connecting. Damn, it had been so easy to latch onto Pietro.

_Okay_ , I breathed out, putting my hands over my knees as I sat with my legs crossed on the top of my bed, the furthest point from Wanda’s cell. I had to focus on the things that were most familiar to me about Wanda. And that was the sound of her voice – the soft way she spoke into my mind when I came back from my first procedure, the high pitch she used when she was lying about how she’s happy with the way Hydra treats her, the quiet, low pitch she used when she talked about the memory of her parents. Suddenly, it was there. I could feel her.

“Wanda,” I said, feeling a relief in the subconscious tone of my voice.

“You did it, (Y/N),” she replies, the manner of her voice very similar to the one she uses to get me to come to, after experimentation.

“(Y/N), you’ve got both of us at once,” I heard Pietro’s deep tone resonate in the caverns of my mind, and it nearly startled me from the link. His voice alone could do that to me.

“Good,” Wanda replied. “Try to break from only _one_ of us.” The disconnecting was the easiest part, but I had never had both of them in a single link, much less try to kick only one of them off of it. I knew the easiest way to get it done was to focus on and strengthen the link to the one closest to me, physically, and that was Pietro.

It wasn’t _just_ that he was physically closer to me. That was probably part of it, but Pietro was more than just my closest cell-mate. I had gotten to know him over the course of the last month – of course, I had gotten to know both of them, but Pietro was the one who heard me crying in the middle of the night because of how badly I wanted to go home. Pietro was the one who loosened the lowest brick in the wall so that I wouldn’t be so physically isolated, so that he could hold my hand. He was the one who would sing Sokovian lullabies to me until I fell asleep.

As I had done with Wanda, I focused on the most familiar points of Pietro – the deep, strong accent of his voice, the vibrating atoms in the air when I was near him, the touch of his fingertips through the loosened brick in the bottom of the wall between us.

Wanda’s line broke – and I smiled at the progress I was making. It had taken me weeks to figure out that I could create a telepathic link to my cell mates, and it had actually happened by accident. I had woken Pietro from sleep after pulling him into a dream with me.

“It’s almost like I can see your face,” Pietro said, the soft, low quality of his voice, even though it was entirely in my mind, sending shivers across my shoulders.

“I can see yours,” I replied, though my eyes were closed. “That blonde in your hair looks ridiculous.” He rolled his eyes, but a smile played over his lips.

“It’s silver,” he specified. “Can you move without breaking the link?” he asked suddenly.

“I might as well try,” I said, and I opened my eyes slowly, still feeling the electric spark of the connection to Pietro in the back of my mind.

“Come to the wall,” he seemed to whisper. I moved slowly, keeping mental note of how the link changed as I moved – the closer I got to Pietro, the stronger the connection became. He moved the brick from the bottom of our separating wall and pushed his fingers through. As soon as I touched them, it felt like a joint snapping back into socket. The link felt unbreakable.

“Still with me?” I asked needlessly, but he had become so quiet, I couldn’t quite tell what he was feeling. No, I could feel _everything_ he was feeling, but I couldn’t tell which was the most important of those feelings, to him. That buzzing excitement was always there with Pietro, but there was also bitterness and regret and brokenness. Yet, underneath all of that, was something that I couldn’t necessarily identify, but it spread heat through my chest, rising into my cheeks.

“More than ever,” he replied, nearly inaudibly, even subconsciously. “It’s like you’re sitting right in front of me.”

“I _am_ sitting right in front of you,” I laughed. I felt him smile. But I knew what he was trying to say – it was like an image of him was being projected on the wall. I couldn’t reach out and touch his face, but I could see every curve of his smile, every wrinkle at the corners of his bright, blue eyes, the hanging waves of his blonde tips brushing across his cheeks.

“I mean, without the wall,” he grinned – I watched his dark eyebrow arch and I instinctively bit my lip in response, wondering how deeply he could feel what I felt. “God, please don’t do that,” he practically groaned, throwing his hand over his eyes, as if he could literally see me. I popped my lip back out from underneath my teeth.

“Do what?” I asked innocently as he peeked at me through his fingers. A spark seemed to ignite in his mind – I could feel it, I could see it in his eyes – and he laid onto the cold floor.

“Lay with me,” he offered and I suppressed the thoughts that were consuming my mind at that moment. If only he knew how I had wanted him to say this in a different context. Still, I mirrored his position, and through the hole in the bottom of the wall, I could actually see him. Not an image in my mind, not the memory of the last time I’d seen him – Pietro’s blue eyes were looking right back at me, and he smiled underneath them. “There you are, (Y/N).”

“Should I break the link?” I asked, his fingers curling over mine, where they were holding onto the edge of the brick opening. He shook his head.

“Not yet,” he whispered, and it was strange to hear his voice without seeing his lips move. The hole in the wall was just barely big enough for him to fit his forearm through, and he brushed his fingers along my jaw, stopping to push the pad of his thumb across my lips. I began to wonder if he could feel the pounding of my heart across the void.

I tried hard to suppress the thought of how badly I wanted to find a way to get him into my cell, to run my fingers through his silver-blonde hair, to get my lips against his skin. As his eyebrow began to rise slowly, I realized he knew exactly what I had been thinking.

“Oh, is _that_ what you want?” he smirked, and I could feel my cheeks flushing. His thumb, still to my lips, pulled down and I pressed a kiss against it.

“More than ever,” I replied using his words. He slipped his arm back through the empty space and pulled my arm along with it. Before I could even respond, he had his lips pressed to the soft skin at the inside of my wrist. The quivering, vibrating feeling that I got just from being near him was intensified by being in direct contact with him. It was like being hit with a defibrillator in the middle of an orgasm. While I was able to keep my helpless whimper to myself, I wasn’t able to keep it out of the connection to Pietro, and I watched him smile against my skin. I pushed my fingers along his jaw – his lips still pressing gentle kisses to the inside of my forearm – and it was nice to finally feel the texture of the stubble on his face. My fingers pressed on as his lips worked their way up my arm and I tugged on the dark hair at the back of his neck.

 

This time, he was the one to moan. With the expression to match. I struggled to breathe.

 

Just as I had begun to think that Pietro was about to shake the wall out from between us, there was a loud explosion from outside, jolting me from our link. Pietro’s eyes widened to match mine, and we both immediately stood. I felt suddenly empty, alone in my own head.

“(Y/N)! Wanda! Move to the inner wall!” Pietro shouted, his voice a booming contrast to the soft whisper I had just had in my thoughts. The very second I placed my hands against the further wall, a deafening explosion from the outer wall compacted me against it – I felt the bricks crack, and maybe also my ribs, at the weight of the impact behind me.

As I crumpled down to the floor, wincing in pain, I felt Pietro’s hands on my shoulders. I opened my eyes to look into his face and he smiled to see me conscious.

“Still with me?” he asked with an anxious smile. I nodded.

“Pietro, we have to find the Baron,” Wanda called breathlessly as she raced to where Pietro was pulling me to my feet. I glanced over at her. Did she mean von Strucker? Sure, they had volunteered to be there, but why would she put her life on the line for Hydra? Leaving me to Pietro, she raced off, hands in the air, holding back explosions and keeping the building together.

“(Y/N), you can come with us,” Pietro offered, his chest heaving as he held me against it. His blue eyes searched mine, and I wondered how he could possibly be involved in Hydra. How could these two twins, younger than I was, caring and bright, care anything about Hydra?

At that moment, something flew between us – Pietro took a single, careless step back to avoid it and it struck a tree right behind where he stood. Wait. Was that an arrow?

Realization suddenly ran cold in my veins. The Avengers had found the facility. This was their raid. My eyes widened and I placed my hands on Pietro’s chest.

“You have to go!” I shouted, pushing against him with all my strength. In his surprise at my sudden outburst, he went stumbling backward, toppling over a piece of the crumbling building and into the cell I had just emerged from.

Right on time, I heard the sound of pinpoint thrusters and looked up to see the Iron Man suit, descending right in front of where I stood. The look on Pietro’s face was pure wrath.

“Fancy meeting you here,” I heard Tony Stark say just as his face plate shifted up to reveal his snarky smile, but it faded when he saw the expression on my face. “Hey, (Y/N), you alright, kiddo?” I could barely move. What the hell was going on? In what universe did Tony fucking Stark know _my_ name? Finally, I forced my eyes away from Pietro, and onto Tony.

“I’m … fine,” I replied, obviously shaken. “How do you know who I am?” He laughed.

“You’re kidding, right? You led me here. With your crazy super Jedi mind tricks.”

“What?” I hissed, trying very hard to keep my eyes away from Pietro. The betrayal I knew I would find in his expression would likely ruin my life.

“We’ll talk logistics later. Cap, a favor?” he said, the Iron Man mask shifting back down over his face before he rose into the air again. As he disappeared from my field of vision, I had nothing left to look at but the mix of complete shock, anger, and treachery on the face of the man I had come to know over the last month. Wanda came up behind him, met my eyes for only a moment, before pulling her twin brother away with her.

“Ma’am,” I heard a pleasant, but powerful voice from behind me, and turned to stare into a muscled wall of red and white stripes. I looked up at the face of the blonde idol. “My name is Steve Rogers. We’re here to take you home.”

 ----------------------------------------------- 

“Tony, I’m fine,” I insisted through clenched teeth. “Go. Save the world or whatever.”

“Call Pepper if you need anything. Other than alcohol. How old are you?” he asked, pointing at me with a suspicious glare, as if I were his teenage daughter.

“I’m twenty-five, Stark,” I groaned.

“Just kidding. I know that,” he laughed, and I could only roll my eyes before a smile could creep its way onto my face. Staying in Stark Tower with the Avengers over the last two weeks had been an experience, to say the least. They had all grown into one weird, extended family to me.

At first, everything had been one, big vacation. A party had been organized to welcome home the heroes and celebrate the safe arrival of their cargo – me. I’d been sleeping on the couch in Natasha’s quarters – she stayed up with me when I had nightmares about the procedures that Hydra had done to me. She’d often call Bruce down to coach me through some basic yoga poses. He said it would help me to clear my mind, to brighten my dreams, and to give me stronger influence with my powers. He was also happy to act as my test subject, letting me invade his thoughts – up to a point. I had worked up to inhabiting the minds of four people – Bruce, Natasha, Thor and Clint – all of them at once. When I went through a single person, it almost seemed like I was able to see through their eyes. Well, not any person – Natasha was the only one that ever worked on.

Evidently, _somehow_ , while I had been held hostage by Hydra, I had managed to link to Tony Stark – a man I had never met, who was thousands of miles away. I hadn’t done it on purpose – it was like when I connected to Pietro in the dream. But I still had no idea how I had done it that way with _Tony_ , without any previous physical or emotional connection. Bruce chalked it up to emotional distress. Which was probably true. I _had_ been praying to a higher power to save me from Hydra, but who knew that Tony Stark had been the power that was listening?

Since I’d been at Stark Tower, I had tried to use that same technique on Pietro – long distance telepathic link – to tell him that I was sorry, to tell him that I missed him, to tell him that I never meant to hurt him, or Wanda. Every time I tried, I never felt that distinct electric pop of being linked to him. But I still talked to him, even if he couldn’t hear me.

Then, suddenly, the vacation was over. Tony created a sentient megalomaniac robot who called himself Ultron and the whole world went to hell. Steve had been telling me that Wanda and Pietro had joined Ultron in an effort to destroy Stark, and the Avengers. I can’t say that I blamed either of them. Stark Industries _was_ responsible for manufacturing the weapons that destroyed their country, destroyed their family. But what the Maximoff twins didn’t know was that, ultimately, Ultron would set out to cleanse the world, by eliminating the entire human race.

So the Avengers went out to save the world. Again. The Tower was wide and empty without them. Pepper was always working. I didn’t even have JARVIS to talk to anymore, thanks to Ultron.

 

The whole night went by. None of them came back. I began to worry.

 

Not only about the Avengers, not just about the good guys. I worried about Pietro and Wanda. And they weren’t the bad guys – they just got trapped on the wrong side. They’d had so many horrible things happen in their lives, but they weren’t bad people. Wanda was probably one of the most caring people I’d ever met. Natasha reminded me of her, sometimes.

And Pietro. Pietro was everything everyone thought he wasn’t. He was calm, despite his speed. He was caring, despite his reckless attitude. He was sentimental, despite his bitterness. He was the one I could fall in love with, despite how deeply I had betrayed him. I spent so many nights wishing I would have told him the truth, in the beginning, that I’d worked my diplomatic skills on him, to try to convince him that Tony Stark was not the same man he had been.

After a shower, I resigned myself to another sleepless night – Bruce wasn’t here to walk me through any calming yoga, Natasha wouldn’t be there to wake me from my screaming dreams. As I pulled one of Nat’s old Iron Man T-shirts over my head, I heard a loud noise come from the roof – one that I had grown to associate with the arrival of a heavy, metal suit.

Quickly, I slipped into a pair of shorts that Nat had given me and raced from the room, toward the door I expected the Avengers to waltz through. Clint was first, barreling through the doors and barely acknowledging me on his way to Tony’s lab. Tony followed, defeat dripping from his expression, but a wild look in his eyes. On his way to the lab, I followed behind him, learning that Natasha had been taken. That was why Clint was so frantic.

Immediately, I jumped into action. If nothing else, I could tell them where Natasha was – I could assure them that she was safe. Quickly, I followed Clint into the lab and, as he was pounding away at computers and communication devices, I concentrated on my familiar link with Nat. Faster than I expected, I felt the connection snap into place. She was aware of my presence instantly.

“Is that you, (Y/N)?” she said, and I could practically feel the smirk on her lips.

“Just checking in, Nat. Clint’s worried sick,” I laughed.

“Tell him I’m alright. They’re holding me in a cell, but nothing I couldn’t break out of, if I wanted to. I’ll stay here for now and see what intel I can work out.”

“I’ll let them know. Be careful,” I cautioned. She just laughed, and I let the link scale down to a point where it wasn’t cognitively present, but still activated. Just as I was about to inform Clint about what I’d discovered, he turned back to me.

“Did you get her?” he asked eagerly. I smiled.

“Of course,” I nodded, placing an assuring hand onto his shoulder. “She’s fine. She’s working an angle.” Instantly, his worried expression melted into one of feign annoyance.

“Typical,” he laughed, and I could hear the relief in his voice. I grinned as I made my way back out of the lab – Tony was tinkering with something and I didn’t want to be nearby when it exploded. Not to mention, there was a ridiculous amount of stress emanating from him, and it was becoming infectious. Outside the lab, I tried to walk myself through the breathing exercises Bruce had taught me, when I felt a warm hand on my shoulder and turned, looking up into the face of Pietro Maximoff. I just blinked mutely as a widening smile spread across his face.

“Still with me?” he asked softly, curling his fingers against my cheek. His eyes wandered down to my feet. If I had been sentient, I would have blushed.

“What are you …” I couldn’t even get out a coherent sentence before Wanda came up, clapping her brother on the shoulder. Both of them looked so different – Wanda’s face looked entirely brightened, relieved almost. Pietro, in his skin-hugging blue and silver mesh shirt – well, he absolutely looked the part of a superhero. Especially when he smiled that way.

“He wouldn’t shut up until I let him find you,” she grinned, winking at him as Steve sided up to her. He smiled at me before pulling her into the lab with the Avengers.

“I got your message,” he said with a quiet smile and my mouth fell open. I had connected to him, after all. I began to wonder what all he had heard me say, how long the link had lasted.

“But, Tony …” I began again, only to be interrupted again.

“I still don’t forgive him for the role he played in the deaths of my parents,” he clarified immediately, but he looked, with a sigh, into Tony’s lab. “But the Captain has convinced me that he is the lesser of two evils.” I had a thousand other questions, and I began to launch them at him when Clint burst back through the door. He looked warily at Pietro for a moment, as if he hadn’t know the twins were in the Tower. Finally, after neither of them made a move, Clint spoke.

“Roadrunner,” he sarcastically acknowledged Pietro before turning back to me. “I didn’t thank you for finding Nat, (Y/N). Thank you,” he said with a wink.

“Anytime, Clint,” I grinned in return. As Clint returned to the lab, I quietly took hold of Pietro’s hand and led him away from the commotion of the Avengers, toward Nat’s quarters. As I looked back at him, his dark eyebrows were raised, blue eyes searching me under silver curls. Once inside the room, I shut the door and took a deep breath. I couldn’t keep it in any longer.

“Listen, I know I should’ve told you about Stark in the beginning, and I shouldn’t have lied to you,” I said, careful to keep my eyes away from his, for fear his expression would talk me out of what I needed to say. “But I didn’t think I was going to survive and I didn’t think it was going to matter, and you and Wanda were so wonderful to me, and I might have developed a crush on you, and I can’t blame you if you hate me, but …”

In the middle of my rambling, Pietro reached over, took my face into his hands and kissed me, softly and slowly, at first. The longer our lips were together, the more quickly the humming of the air around him returned – pricking my skin, tingling my lips, aching in my bones until it felt like he was all around me.

He walked me backward until my legs hit the edge of Nat’s couch – I nearly fell down onto it, but his hand darted from my cheek to my waist before I even knew it had moved. Once on my waist, his fingers drifted up underneath the hem of my shirt and I instinctively let out a soft whine at his touch against my bare skin. His response was multi-faceted – his grip on my skin expanded, the pressure of his mouth against mine increased, his tongue slipped between my teeth. I didn’t fail to notice his quiet moan as it fell into my mouth.

Before another breath could fall from my lips, he had spun us both around. He fell easily back down onto the couch, tugging at my hips until I fell with him, over him, straddling his lap, and he hummed delightedly at our new position. I could _feel_ exactly how delighted he was, and I rotated my hips further down into him, to which he replied with another, louder moan, before he drove his tongue further down into my mouth. This time, I was the one to moan. His hands slipped further underneath my shirt and just as his fingers reached my ribcage, he pulled away from me, looking at the Iron Man logo across my chest, and then back up to my face.

“Do you mind if I get rid of this?” he asked, breathlessly, thumbing on the hem, and I could only sit in awe at how adorably polite his request was. For my answer, I reached down and pulled the edge of his fitted shirt until he raised his arms in the air. I pulled it slowly from his skin, his hair falling in curls as the collar brushed over his face, and I sat back on my heels, admiring the curves of his defined skin. He watched me restlessly as I raised my arms.

“Please,” I finally responded with a slight arch in my brow. I was reacquainted with his speed as my shirt was thrown against the wall and his lips were connected to my collarbone. As he kissed across my chest, I pulled my fingers through his silver hair, dragging my fingernails down the back of his neck. He replied by biting down softly onto the skin at the edge of my bra.

His lips worked their way back up to my mouth, he breathed heavy into me, and I let my hands explore the slopes of his chest, down his abdomen, until I reached the button of his black jeans. Shamelessly, I curled my fingers underneath it, against his bare skin, and his breathing hitched sharply in response. In surprise at his reaction, I pulled away from him.

“No, (Y/N),” he breathed out, “Don’t stop,” he pleaded, taking my hand into his and pressing it low onto his abdomen, recapturing my lips. With his new approval, my touch expanded and I slid my hand down over the zipper of his jeans, groping him heavy-handedly. He growled impatiently and rose his hips to meet my fingers that much harder.

Finally, in his haste, he wrapped his arms tightly around my ribs and flipped me back onto the couch, so that he was lying over me, his hips nestled between my legs. The sudden movement, and the weight of Pietro on top of me left me with a lack of breath, but it was the most blissful, dizzying feeling. He took just a moment to admire the position we were in, biting down onto his bottom lip, before voraciously burying his tongue into my mouth, rocking his hips and everything between them against me. With every stroke, I breathed harder, and so did he.

 My fingers teased at the border between his skin and his jeans – I ran them along the edge until I could feel him shiver underneath my touch. Holding himself up with his knees, and not missing a beat in the rhythm of our kiss, his hands shot down and he instantly unzipped everything that was keeping me from him. I slid my hands agonizingly slowly along his torso, dipping and rising with every curve of every muscle, until he was groaning helplessly. My hand slipped inside the splayed border of his jeans, molding my fingers to the shape of him, outside his boxer briefs. Immediately, at my touch, he sighed heavily, moving his lips down my cheek, across my jaw, over my neck. The buzzing energy that always surrounded him increased to a higher, more erratic state – it was like he was purring against me, vibrating in my hand.

With my obvious incentive to continue, he buried his lips into the nape of my neck as his hands pressed and kneaded their way down my chest, until he reached the waist of my shorts. He paused for a moment, tucking his fingers in just slightly, as he looked back at me. The expression on his face was tentative, as if he were waiting for some sort of sign to do what he was about to do. As if I hadn’t given him plenty. If he needed more, I’d give it to him. Without breaking his gaze, I pulled at the waist of his boxers until I could feel his bare, erect skin in my hand and I tugged softly back and forth. He swallowed hard, his sharp Adam’s apple bobbing along his long neck, and he rolled his head back, closing his eyes.

“Fuck, (Y/N),” he moaned, long and loud, his accent poured over his deep voice. He quickly shoved his tongue back into my mouth, panting hard as he pulled the shorts from my hips. Once they were out of the way, and with him still in my hand, I pulled softly onto him until his hips pushed forward. As he pressed carefully into me, each ridge of raised skin along his length rubbed across my already swollen crux, and if it had felt like he had been vibrating in my _hand_ – it was suddenly amplified tenfold.

His name was already on my lips, and with every forward thrust, I felt my voice rising to a scream, with no capacity or fortitude to stop it. The expression on his face wasn’t helping – his jaw was slightly slack; his tongue was rolling over his front teeth, pushing up his top lip, and his breathing was heavier than ever. As he buried his face into my neck, huffing hard into my skin, he began to speak, but it was in Sokovian – a language I’d grown intimately familiar with during the course of our month as cell-mates. But I was always able to pick out my name.

He said it over and over as he rolled his hips into mine, and I dug my fingernails into the tight skin on his back, feeling like I could break at any moment. Just then, as if on purpose, the effervescent feeling of his power exploded – the bulb in the lamp burst and the couch creaked under the strain and I was suddenly and completely unmade. He throbbed against me as he pushed and pulled and it felt as though every bit of his power was directed into me. I couldn’t bottle the scream building in my chest, and as I opened my mouth to empty my lungs, Pietro covered my mouth with his own, gliding his tongue deep. It was enough to send him over the brink – I could tell, as he pulled back to bite down hard onto my bottom lip, letting my name cover his lips in a deep, satisfied moan.

“Christ, (Y/N),” he sighed, letting his forehead rest against my chest for a moment. I laughed, running my fingers through his silver curls. Before either of us could say more, I heard Tony shouting from his lab.

“Hi-yo, Silver, get in here! Wrap it up, lover boy!” Pietro looked up at me with raised eyebrows, and I just kissed him on the end of his nose.

“Go. Save the world, or whatever. You’re a hero now, Quicksilver.” His smile was immense.

“Quicksilver,” he repeated. “I like that.”

 ------------------------------------------

He wasn’t even supposed to have been in Sokovia. I tried not to blame Tony for taking Pietro with them. Hell, even I had told him he was a hero. I had given him a stupid nickname.

After the whole fiasco with using Jarvis to create Vision and the chaos that had ensued then, I wasn’t sure _any_ of them would be safe. They had all been fighting with each other, then, over the creation of Vision. After all, Tony had done this before, and he had gotten Ultron in return. It had been a mess, and they had all knocked each other around a bit before Thor dropped in and made the decision for them, calling down his lightning storm. At first, it wasn’t clear who Vision would side with, but the minute he handed Mjolnir to Thor, the tension in the room had practically melted.

I’d been linked to him, when it happened. It was Pietro’s idea, the link, so I could keep an eye on him. But Pietro had assured me that nothing could catch him.

I guess, in the end, he had been right. If he hadn’t _wanted_ those bullets to hit him, they wouldn’t have. He had given his life to save a boy – and to save Hawkeye. I had seen it all, heard it all, _felt_ it all. Clint told me he was snarky right up to the end. That was some sort of bizarre comfort.

Wanda and I cried into each other for weeks – she had it much worse. He wasn’t just her brother, he was her _twin_ brother and he was all she had left. Sure, she had the Avengers now, and she had me, but we were pennies compared to the wealth of Pietro.

It had been three months since the Sokovia crisis. Three months since the Avengers saved the world by taking down Ultron. Three months since Wanda lost her only brother. Three months since I stopped feeling. Three months since I stopped doing _anything_.

I didn’t even try to link with anyone any more. In some ways, I still felt the connection to Pietro, lingering – like a phone that had only disconnected on one end. It was excruciating, just listening to the silence on the other end. But I didn’t want to give it up. I wasn’t ready to let go.

 

I tried for the fifth time to go to sleep – it was well past 3am and I hadn’t slept at all. Really, I hadn’t slept in the last three months, but Natasha was beginning to worry, so I pretended to be well-rested. She even bought me a bed, instead of the couch – but most nights I spent on the couch anyway, as it was the last place I was with Pietro. The fading scent of him still clung to it.

My eyes were closed, but I wasn’t really asleep. In the back of my mind, a nagging thought was steadily growing. It was like a storm of  independent emotions – ones that I wasn’t feeling, but were being felt for me. If I focused on them, I could pinpoint them – exhaustion, defeat, regret, but also pride, and hope. Evidently, in my insomnia, I had accidentally linked someone.

It wasn’t any of the Avengers – I was familiar with all of their auras. And it was impossible for me to link with someone I didn’t know, or at least had some prior knowledge of. But it was still familiar to me – I was sure I should’ve known who was on the other end.

With a shake of my head, I tried to break it, but it wasn’t budging. This was the strongest link I’d ever created, and I didn’t even know who it was with. Suddenly, I heard my name. I sat straight up. It wasn’t out loud, but it was just as clear as if it had been. I stopped breathing to listen again.

Finally, there it was – a familiar voice, rumbled and deep, as if just woken from a long sleep, spoke in a soft, low tone, drenched in a rich Sokovian accent. With a quiet laugh, he whispered;

 

 

 

“Still with me?”

 


End file.
